Small Arcs of Larger Circles - Iridescent Reads for Aotearoa Bookwyrms

No cover — Small Arcs of Larger Circles (2016, Triarchy Press)

216 pages

Published Oct. 17, 2016 by Triarchy Press.

(1 review)

This is a collection of essays, reflections and poems by Nora Bateson, the noted research designer, film-maker, writer and lecturer. She is the daughter of Gregory Bateson and president of the International Bateson Institute (IBI). Building on Gregory Bateson's famous book Towards an Ecology of Mind and her own film on the subject, Nora Bateson here updates our thinking on systems and ecosystems, applying her own insights and those of her team at IBI to education, organisations, complexity, academia, and the way that society organizes itself. She also introduces the term symmathesy to describe the contextual mutual learning through interaction that takes place in living entities at larger or smaller scales. While she retains her father's rigorous attention to definition, observation and academic precision, she also moves well beyond that frame of reference to incorporate more embodied ways of knowing and understanding. These are reflected in her essays and poems …

This is a collection of essays, reflections and poems by Nora Bateson, the noted research designer, film-maker, writer and lecturer. She is the daughter of Gregory Bateson and president of the International Bateson Institute (IBI). Building on Gregory Bateson's famous book Towards an Ecology of Mind and her own film on the subject, Nora Bateson here updates our thinking on systems and ecosystems, applying her own insights and those of her team at IBI to education, organisations, complexity, academia, and the way that society organizes itself. She also introduces the term symmathesy to describe the contextual mutual learning through interaction that takes place in living entities at larger or smaller scales. While she retains her father's rigorous attention to definition, observation and academic precision, she also moves well beyond that frame of reference to incorporate more embodied ways of knowing and understanding. These are reflected in her essays and poems on food, Christmas, love, honesty, environmentalism and leadership. [Subject: Systems thinking, education, social anthropology, environmentalism, Bateson, symmathesy]

1 edition

finktank reviewed Small Arcs of Larger Circles by Nora Bateson

Lovely book on systems thinking

5 stars

Close echoes to Gregory Bateson and Gilles Deleuze both. Easier to understand than both, I think. Nora Bateson's prose is often lovely, compelling, poetic. It represents in form the ideas she espouses. Symmathesy and Warm Data are her concepts and she circles them, especially in the latter half of the book. A worthwhile read to those who want to think differently as they work on the problems of our world. And a different way in to understanding Deleuze than Deleuze himself. I'll return to some of the essays in here over the next years, I'm certain. Can be read in small sections.